"New" sells (well, unless you're talking about New Coke). But while marketers trumpet every car feature like it's never been seen before, many "new" features of today first appeared decades ago.

Pushbutton Shifting

Pushbutton Shifting

The 2013 MKZ, Lincoln's new midsize sedan arriving in dealerships this fall, won't have a lever in the center console that lets you shift between neutral, reverse, and drive. Instead, five electric pushbuttons electromechanically "shift" a conventional automatic transmission.

These buttons on the dash trigger an electric motor that physically moves cables connected to the automatic's mechanical shift mechanism. In an ordinary car, the shift lever would be connected to a console- or column-mounted shift lever.

Pushbutton Shifting

Pushbutton Shifting

Lincoln may be making a big deal out of the MKZ's feature, but pushbutton shifting is a century old. The idea surfaced early in the development of the automobile. Several small automakers fitted the Vulcan electromechanical gearshift systems to cars and trucks as early as 1913.

Chrysler popularized leverless shifting with the system it introduced in 1956. The pushbutton mechanism mechanically operated the automatic transmission via cables, eliminating traditional column- and console-mounted shifters. Chrysler offered pushbutton shifters on many of its cars and light trucks through 1964. Hundreds of thousands of vehicles sold in the 1950s and '60s had this feature.

Ford briefly toyed with pushbutton shifting with the Teletouch system offered on Edsel products (1957 to 59). Packard used the technology in its Touch Button Ultramatic of 1956. The more complex Ford and Packard solutions were unreliable and quickly went out of production. As a result, the technology never really caught on with the general public, so Chrysler dropped its push-button shifter too.